A little Inline::C could do the trick. We could check if the passed in SV is a reference, if so, dereference it and get the SvREFCNT of that. The only issue is to remember that by passing it as \@array we up the reference count.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use Inline C;
use strict;

my( @x, $z, $r );

@x = qw( a b c d e f g );
$z = \@x;
$r = ref_count( \@x );
print "Ref count is $r - expect 3 - initial, ref, and pass ref\n";
$r = ref_count( $z );
print "Ref count is $r - expect 2 - initial, and ref\n";

__END__
__C__
#include <stdio.h>

U32 ref_count ( SV * val ) {
        SV *y;
        y = SvROK(val) ? SvRV( val ) : val;
        return SvREFCNT( y );
}
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-derby